


I'm running out of colours (You're running out the door)

by jestbee



Series: Fic Every Day in June 2018 [9]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Post-Break Up, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 12:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: Dan keeps coming back, but all it does is hurt





	I'm running out of colours (You're running out the door)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, this is really angsty and not my usual style 
> 
> I suppose it's a spiritual successor to [Baby were such a fucking cliché](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11257623) bit it isn't the same 'verse

"You can't keep doing this," Phil whispers. 

His lips brush a stray piece of Dan's hair curled up against his mouth and he can feel him nod into the hollow of his throat. 

His face is damp where tears have tracked down his face and Phil wants to hold him tight, tight, tighter, so much tighter than he ever possibly could with arms that shake. Dan is like smoke, the tighter he grips the easier he disperses into thin air and Phil is left grasping at nothing. 

Phil takes a deep breath and steels himself for it, for the inevitable. Dan drags his tongue up over Phil's pulse point and he has to close his eyes because looking is too painful, even as Dan slips hands underneath his shirt, it hurts. 

This is Dan of years ago. This is Dan before separate flats, before the division of assets. This is Dan of DanandPhil, when their names and lives and everything else was entangled. 

This is not the Dan Phil knows now. 

And yet here he is, slipping each of the buttons on Phil's shirt out of their holes one by one and breathing hot and wet on the skin of his collar, dipping in to the curves around his bones and anointing him with kisses. 

His mouth is familiar, and his hands on his hips and the way he tugs at his belt. Even the sound of Phil's knees hitting the bed where Dan pushes him backwards is familiar and it stings, like something left over, ripping open nearly-closed wounds. They scar, they stay with him. 

"Dan," Phil tries again. Though he doesn't now know if he's asking him to stop or asking him to carry on. 

Dan just shakes his head. Crawls into his lap when Phil has settled on the edge of his duvet. It's new, nothing remains of their old life. Old blue, green, grey, black sheets bundled in to bin bags and new ones picked out in red, something alien and strange for him to fall asleep in every night. Something angry, sharp and exposed like the way his heart feels. 

Dan is still familiar even amidst this colour. His hair is wild, his clothes are askew, clothes Phil doesn't recognise. He brought the tears with him when he turned up at the door, but Phil recognises them like enemies. Ever-present now in the moments Phil gets to steal some of Dan's time. 

Phil is borrowing Dan for tonight. Or Dan is borrowing him. 

The difference is Dan has something to go back to and Phil has these empty red sheets that now, despite the shocking colour, different from anything they've ever shared, will hold the memory of Dan above him, eyes so wide and so full of questions Phil doesn't have the answers to. It's been so long since Dan has looked at him like that, like Phil could give him what he needed, it's been even longer since Phil could actually live up to that expectation. Phil may have to get rid of these sheets too. 

He's running out of colours that he doesn't associate with Dan. 

Dan is intent in his silent questioning, cocking his head and looking at him with promises Phil wants to believe but that he'll never keep. Phil pulls him down with a hand on his nape and kisses him instead, because while it burns him, slices into him sharp and unyielding, it hurts less than letting himself believe that this isn't just temporary. 

They kiss, hands wandering over Dan's shoulders, the dip of his waist, slipping beneath the elastic of his sweatpants to cup the delicate soft flesh of his ass, loving the way it fits into his palms like it always has. Dan moans, and bucks, and Phil wants to believe that he is the only one that can make Dan feel this way. 

He is selfish, so selfish. He twists them, slipping an arm around Dan's waist and moving him underneath his body in a move so practised and well-known that Dan gasps and Phil could swear it was three years ago. Back in their flat, in their sheets, back before this sea of red was necessary and Dan belonged right there by his side. 

Phil pins his wrists above his head and Dan bucks up in to him again, needy and wanting. Phil wants to keep him here, to make him sit and stay and come back to him. Dan must know, he must understand what it does to Phil for him to go quiet and pilant in his hands, like it might work, like Phil could do anything that would make him come _home_. 

"Dan," Phil says, but gone is the insistence, the reprimand. He hates how his voice is full of the wonder he usually keeps inside his chest.

It's so open and raw and painful that Dan must hear it but if he does he ignores it. Dan surges upward, catching Phill off guard and tugging where his wrists are in Phil's fists so that he crashes down across Dan's chest. Dan's arms wind around his neck and Phil can kid himself it's because Dan wants him closer, wants to keep him near as much as he wants to keep Dan near. 

Not just that he's trying to avoid looking him in the eye. 

Dan has his eyes closed as he kisses Phil, hiding caramel iries behind flickering eyelids and Phil misses them immediately. They've been gone for so long now.

Phil skims his hands down Dan's arms, his touch featherlight so he can feel the goosebumps break out on his skin. 

"Phil," Dan says, breaking away, and it's a bit of a plea, one of the first things he's said since he turned up at the flat they used to share, his eyes red-rimmed and his breath quick like he'd run the entire way. "Please." 

How can Phil resist? He'll keep giving Dan whatever he wants because he's weak. He mostly feels pathetic but he can hear himself making a shushing sound in Dan's ear, a sussarant noise behind his top teeth, pushed there by his tongue. 

"I've got you," Phil says and Dan lets out a choked sound and buries his face in Phil's neck. 

It's wrong. What Dan _needs_ is his best friend to help his sort through whatever the hell this is, but instead he's got his ex, his pathetic still-in-love-with-him ex who holds him on new sheets and wishes they were old ones. 

It seems like what he _wants_ is Phil to weigh him down, ground him here on this bed, make him forget whatever it is that has driven him here tonight. Phil presses his hips down, feeling the hard length of Dan across his lower abdomen. 

Dan throws his head back and gasps. Phil takes the advantage of the position to press his mouth to the long line of Dan's throat, nipping a little with his teeth. 

Dan whines, flinching slightly, and Phil shushes him. 

"I won't leave a mark, don't worry." 

It might be a little too blunt, too much of a direct confrontation of what they are doing here, of the things they shouldn't be doing. Of what is outside of this flat, this room, this bed. All the reasons why this small moment is so stolen, so tense, so fucked up. 

His hands travel back up Dan's arms, unlooping them from his neck and slotting their fingers together above Dan's head. He presses down firmly, a request for him to keep his hands there. It's a request he's made before, and Dan knows what it means. 

Dan lts his arms go limp, curved on to the red cotton of Phil's pillow, pale skin a beautiful contrast, his brown curls fanned out away from his forehead. His pink lips are parted and Phil is shocked to find his eyes are no longer closed. He's looking up at Phil with a glazed expression of wonder, his tongue darting out to wet his plump bottom lip so that it's shiney and delectable. 

Phil leans down and bites it. Maybe a little too roughly, his teeth sinking into the soft flesh feeling the roundness of it give under the pressure. When he pulls away it's swollen and red and he's pleased beyond belief. 

It will fade, but for now there is something changed, a mark on Dan he put there, claimed just for a moment. For this stolen fucked up moment. 

Phil continues kissing him, down his neck and over his collar bones, dipping his tongue into the valleys of his skin where his bone juts out. He passes the flat of his tongue briefly over a nipple to hear Dan gasp. He knows it isn't a particularly sensitive area but Dan is keyed up and every tiny thing is getting a reaction, especially when Phil has told him he isn't allowed to move his hands. 

Dan always did like being denied things, for Phil to deny him them. He isn't very good at resisting them on his own.

"Phil," he breathes, "Please, I want…" 

Dan's voice is grainy, like he's pushing it out past something large and strangling. Phil knows that voice. 

"Dan," Phil says, leaning away.

He can't do this. Dan is broken, needing, far more so than Phil had initially realised. Phil is selfish, so so selfish for even doing this much. Dan has a whole life back at home, and Phil is just selfish enough to not care. But hurting Dan… not being there for him, that's something he'll never do.

"Please," Dan says again, his eyes wet and his wrists still held over his head. 

Phil shushes him, sliding to the side and pressing his body flat along the length of Dan. He gently tugs on his wrists, rolling him over into his side and Dan immediately curls in to him. 

"It's okay," Phil says, "I've got you." 

"You do," Dan says, quietly, between the tears Phil knows are now falling onto his shoulder. "You always do. I miss you." 

That hurts. Phil has to close his eyes for a moment and steady himself, running a hand up and down between Dan's shoulder blades like his heart hasn't just been ripped out.

"Dan…" he says again, his own voice sounding wobbly.

Dan just gulps down a breath and presses his face further into Phil's skin. He's breathing hot in his neck and Phil wants to hold him so tight that he never leaves again. He also wants to shove him away, because it burns, having him this close. 

"I'm sorry," Dan says. "But I do. I miss you. It isn't the same."

"That was the point," Phil says, "the same wasn't working." 

"It could," Dan insists, "It could Phil, please." 

Phil shakes his head, his chin rubbing into the softness of Dan's hair. 

This doesn't work. They've tried. All they do is damage each other over and over and Phil can't keep doing it. Dan shouldn't even be here.

"You need to go home," Phil whispers. 

Dan is quiet for a moment, breathing a little uneven against him. Phil's hand is flat on his back now and he counts the rise and fall of his shoulder blades with each breath. 

"Can I stay?" Dan says, finally.

Yes, Phil wants to say, forever. Come home. 

"I don't think…" 

"Please Phil, just--" he cuts himself off, heaving a sigh that sounds pained. "Please."

Phil leans back, putting some space between them so that he can look at Dan's face. He's flushed red, his eyes still wet, lips parted and pink. He looks so familiar, and yet nothing like Phil remembers. Dan is the one person he knows more than anyone else, the one person that knows him better than anyone else, and yet he might as well be stranger. This all feels wrong, like it doesn't fit anymore however much Phil is willing it to. 

He reaches up to cup Dan's face in his hands. His fingers fit around the curves of his cheekbones like they always have, and when he leans in to press a delicate kiss against his mouth it's a movement he's made time and time again. 

It has to be the last time. 

He settles them back down. Rearranging so that he can pull the red duvet up and over them. He holds Dan close in the dark, feels the dips and valleys of his body like a map to somewhere he's no longer allowed to go. 

Dan's breathing is loud in the quiet room. Phil can hear that he's still crying for a while yet, the soft sniffles and muffled sobs into his chest. He doesn't say anything, just holds him close until they finally fall asleep.

-

In the morning, Dan is gone. 

Phil didn't expect him to stay, despite when he'd said about nothing else feeling right. Phil understands that sometimes it's better when it doesn't. Because what they'd had had felt right at the time and then it didn't. And that was worse. 

Phil wakes the red sheets and wonders which colour he'll buy next. What else will he try to rid Dan from his bed and his life and his head. 

It's fruitless, really, trying to find something that doesn't remind him of Dan. 

Because Dan will be back. He always is.

He'll turn up on Phil's doorstep, with tears or without. And they'll go through this over and over. Sometimes Phil is selfish, sometimes there is sex and sometimes there is a fucked up kind of comfort in it. It always ends with Phil alone.

He pulls himself out of bed and sets about stripping it. Maybe they're destined to keep repeating this same thing over and over in different hues until they run out. What happens then, Phil doesn't know.


End file.
